


The Aunt and the Teacher

by Zoya1416



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: An Unsuspecting Aunt, Gen, House of Ill Repute, Manipulation, Only an Orphan Boy, Seamstresses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-26
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-22 18:08:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2516975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoya1416/pseuds/Zoya1416
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roberta Meserole tries to think of what to do with her orphaned nephew, five year old Havelock Vetinari. She has no idea what she's up against.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Aunt and the Teacher

Bobbi Meserole frowned as she studied the nephew left to her so suddenly. It was just like her brother to take his fast curricle out on a pleasure drive without checking all the equipage. On a sharp turn in the hills above the Vieux River, he'd swung his horses hard, a trace had broken, and they'd overturned, spilling her brother and the wife she'd never liked into the river.

Now she was saddled with a five year old boy, silent, sallow-skinned with too-long black hair. She was twenty-five, far too old to be on the streets, and had only established her own house five years ago. It was all she could do to maintain the girls and keep the house profitable. She couldn't keep him in her rooms, and she didn't want to board him out to child-minders like the other...complications...of her girls. She'd already put in an application for the Assassin's Guild in Ankh-Morpork, because everyone knew it offered the best education on the Disc, but they wouldn't take him until he was eleven.

He was in the house's nursery for the time being, while she pondered. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the small parlor, and had somehow gotten the other five children, ages two to four, to line up in front of him. It wasn't true, no matter what the gossips said, that she would put girls out when they were eight or nine. 

They'd come back into the house when five or six, yes, but only to clean, sweep, mop, scrub floors and privies, haul in the flour from the miller and the meat from the butcher, carry nets of food from the market, help the cook, wash and dry dishes, make beds, and launder and fold sheets. They carried wood, laid fires and cleared grates, made repairs to dresses, carried drinks to the girls and customers, and performed other light jobs. They were fed, clothed, and kept in the warm, much better conditions than many children in Genua. She didn't even grudge them rags or straw to put under their blankets.

Now little Havelock had taken several rag dolls and spread them on the floor. She couldn't quite hear him, but she could see that he'd lined them up in numerical order—a single doll on the first row, two on the next, three on the third, up to six. He was pointing and the other children were apparently reciting after him.

Then he took several broken straws the boy children played with, and arranged them in shapes. He could get a triangle and square easily enough, but what was he going to do for a circle? Fascinated, she saw him reach into his shirt for a small pair of scissors—where had he obtained those scissors? He'd been under her roof for only half a day, and already he'd stolen something sharp. He carefully cut a circle of cloth around the bottom edge of a doll's skirt, and lined it up. 

“What are you doing?”

He didn't startle, but looked up at her with blue eyes the same as her brother's. “I'm teaching them.”

“I can see that, but why?”

“If they learn, maybe they can get better jobs than their mothers.”

She boxed his ears. “What would you know about their mothers? You've been here less than a day! I know your father didn't come here.”

He was calm in his reply. “No, but he said things to my mother. That the girls worked on their backs.”

She lifted her hand to strike him again, but he continued. “I don't see how anyone could get any work done lying down, so I'm teaching them how to work sitting up. When they know all their shapes and numbers, I would like to teach them colors. The doll dresses are gray and brown, but the ladies here have pretty colored dresses. Could you give me little pieces of them?”

She was amused. “After the boys and girls learn all that, what are you going to teach them? How to read?”

“Yes, if I could get slates and chalk. They could”—

“They could not! No one wants a girl who could read—what kind of job do you think a girl could get anyway? You have no idea”—she halted her tongue. How in the world had a quiet little boy made her lose her temper?

“Maybe not the girls, then, but if the boys learn to read and do sums, they could keep tallies for dockworkers, or clerks and secretaries like my father. He even knew how to keep two books of numbers! Even stableboys and bootboys could get better jobs if they learned more. They could keep better track of how much fish was sold, or how much hay a good horse eats." He paused. "Or how much the girls ate, too.” He raised his solemn face to hers, and she could momentarily see his schemes and ideas.

Bobbi had never heard the expression, “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps,” but she could see that her nephew was cutting himself a place in her life. His thoughts about teaching would never work and were completely impractical, but it was amazing that such a little mite had any coherent goals. He couldn't do any harm by this, and if it kept the other children out of the way and prevented them from mischief, so much the better. He bowed his head to her, and turned quietly back to the lessons. 

“I suppose you want books to learn more yourself, eh?” 

He suddenly flashed a smile so much like his father that she was touched. “Yes, please. Any kind of book, anything at all—I need to practice my reading, too.”

She laughed and shook her dark curls at him. “You little scamp! I can see I'll have no peace unless I do exactly what you want. Well, you can live here, if you do exactly what I want, too. Here, take this book, a john, I mean a man who visited us, left it behind.”

“ 'About Prin-ci-pal-ities.' Thank you, Aunt Roberta, for letting me stay with with you. I'll help you; you'll see.”

She walked off, purple dress swaying, still wondering how a five-year old had known to make himself indispensable. The boy picked up the book and pieced out a sentence. “It is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares, and a lion to terrify the wolves.” He smiled happily, and carried the book to his mattress.

**Author's Note:**

> My favorite part is where Havelock steals something sharp on the 1st day.


End file.
